Hollywood Stylemaker Free Fashion Game Review

Hollywood Stylemaker is a mercifully short game hosted on Addicting Games that provides you with a wardrobe and then defies your skills as a budding Hollywood fashion icon to create looks suitable for movie roles and red carpets. Interestingly enough, Hollywood Style Maker bucks the old, cliched trend of making levels more difficult as the game goes on. The last level is arguably the easiest level of them all.

Game play goes thus: you are presented with a scenario and then challenged to create an outfit for it. You have the choice of various hairstyles (none of which matter remotely, as you won't be judged on the hairstyle at all), tops, bottoms, dresses and accessories.

An interesting, though somewhat subtle game dynamic comes in when you realize that you're actually better off accessorizing less than more. You see, every item you put on (aside from hair, which apparently doesn't matter in the slightest,) will be judged – so it doesn't matter whether you put on two items or twenty (though you probably can't actually put twenty items on), you'll be judged for them all. Make a good selection of two or three pieces, and you actually have less chance of getting the dreaded 'ick' from the director.

You see, once you have chosen your outfit, you go on set and the director judges you harshly. If you make a particularly excellent choice, the director will reward you with a comment like 'Stellar' or 'Excellent'. If you choose particularly objectionable items, he will say 'Ick' or 'Really?' and of course, 'Meh' is always an option if you fail to inspire him one way or another.

There's something of a potentially misogynist twist to the game in that the female protagonist (who is a lifeless cut out at best – ooo, now there's a cutting metaphor for life,), is judged ruthlessly by an equally two dimensional male authority figure who she must go out of her way to please if she is to advance in her career. I'd have to give this a feminism rating of 0/10, but fortunately for 'Hollywood Style Maker' this isn't a score likely to affect the attractiveness of the game to people who assume all feminists have beards.

So, what is my overall score for this game? Let me break it down into arbitrary categories.

Challenge: 7/10

This game provides just enough of a challenge to be worth playing, but not so much of a challenge that you'll give up and watch paint dry instead.

Replayability: 2/10

A couple of plays through and you're done – which is fine. Games don't need to become life absorbing pits of despair to be good.

Graphics: 5/10

Graphics are passable, and certainly better than the first Prince of Persia, a comparison which is almost as irrelevant as this category.

Cost: 10/10

Free. (Although someone did once say that if something is free, then you are the product, but they sound cynical and I bet they couldn't make a pretty pretty outfit for the Oscars.)